2k

In 2017, this race was canceled because of hard wind. This year, the only trick that our lake did was to swap wind direction specially for Saturday. The entire week had been a nice tailwind from Start to Finish. Now it was a headwind. Otherwise the water was fine.

I had to be there because of the eights races. I didn’t race any small boats. But lots of family members were racing. Here’s a picture I took when I walked to a nearby restaurant to have a quick lunch.

I spent most of the day relaxing on the grass. I made a mistake not going for a quick training row in the single, but there was so much to see.

These races are organized by Lodni Sporty, the rowing club on the other side of the lake. From our club’s perspective, it’s a strange event. You don’t really see the buzz of racing, the commentator’s voice, the out-of-town clubs arriving with their trailers. It’s just a busy, sunny day at the rowing club. But then you take your boat out of the boathouse on to the water, you do a warming up, and there you are in the middle of a regatta.

First, my sons rowed their races, watched by their trainers:

Dominik was second in the 4x+ over 1000m. In fact, their cox had a confusing moment and they rowed about 1100m, leaving the race course and then returning to it.

Robin and Vasek won the 500m in the double:

Romana and Veronika won the Women’s double (for their only opponent not being at the start in time, because of double boat use).

Then some more lazy race watching:

We need binoculars to see most of the racing.

By then, it was time for some eights racing. A certain Masters group had registered for the Open 8+, and a mix of Juniors and Men from our club had taken up the challenge.

(Of course, this is not the CVK Brno Masters 8+, because we are not training at all.)

So a little after 5pm, after the Women’s 8+ race, two crews hopped in the boats and rowed to the start, which is just one kilometer from our club. This Masters 8+ group needed that entire 1k to go from arms only to full stroke, and that was all the warming up they got, because the referees were eager to get this final event of the regatta started off.

Two eights at the start. A Masters group, and a mix of Juniors and young Men. A Wintech boat (the Masters) against an Empacher (the men/juniors).

Ready … go.

No practice starts done at all, and still this was a great start. The Masters were half a length ahead of the juniors/men and in the first 200m they built that to a boat length advantage, going strong at 35spm.

One of the Masters rowers, a guy sitting in 2 seat, was rowing well and enjoying a bit of racing, but also struggling with his too loose hat blowing off his head in the headwind. The hat blew into his lap and he was afraid of getting it between the rolling seat. Luckily, after a few strokes, the hat fell into the cockpit behind the footstretcher.

Thirty four strokes a minute, 500m into the race, the Masters were still leading, and just silently enjoying the view of the Juniors/Men, a length behind them. That other boat was not silent. One after the other, those guys were shouting calls. They were clearly surprised at not leading.

After about 1000m, the Masters eight passed the CVK Brno club house, in front of assembled wives and partners. Good to hear the cheers.

A few strokes later, there was a huge wake coming from the left. From the Water Rescue Squad, who were being playful with their launch.

The Masters got the full wake but kept rowing, but the Juniors were doing one more of their power tens while they didn’t have the wake, and rowed straight through the Masters.

From that moment on, the Masters were trailing half a length, then a length. There was some good cheering at Kozi Horka (Little Goat Mountain) and the club house of Lodni Sporty Brno, and then it was counting strokes until the finish line.

As expected, the men won, but the Masters won the 1k, and isn’t that the Masters’ distance?

Well, look at the stroke rate. No wonder they faded at 1k.

How-To

This row was recorded on a NK SpeedCoach GPS 2 coupled to a Polar OH1 optical heart rate meter, worn on two seat Masters rower’s upper left arm. This doesn’t limit the rowing at all.

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There were a lot of people wearing heart rate belts, and perhaps this confused the SpeedCoach, or there was something else wrong with the heart rate, because this Masters rower went well above 170bpm. He knows how he felt during the race, and it certainly wasn’t 140 bpm.

The row was recorded as a “Just Row”, because on Regattas, you don’t want to fiddle with the SpeedCoach right before the race start.

After the race, the SpeedCoach was paired with an iPhone and the row was downloaded using NK LiNK for iOS. From the app, you can select the workout and send it as a CSV to workouts@rowsandall.com, which is exactly what happened just before the post-race shower.

As the SpeedCoach didn’t record power data, the rower had to use one of the little tricks on rowsandall.com to get a power estimate.

On the Advanced Workout page, there is a link to “Geeky Stuff”. Clicking on that brings you to a page where you can Edit wind and stream data and start the OTW power calculations.

First, we need to add the wind, because the wind direction has a large influence on the power needed to achieve a certain boat speed.

The easiest way to get wind data is to click on either “Airport Data” or “Dark Sky Data”. The wind is downloaded from these databases (either for the nearest airport or for the row’s coordinates from the Dark Sky database) and from the wind bearing and speed, a headwind/tailwind is estimated. After that is set, you can launch the OTW Power calculations.

It is important to check the boat type and average crew weight, otherwise you get nonsense results. The Quick Calculation is a slightly faster calculation cutting a few corners. The site will launch a background process to estimate the power for each stroke, and it will send you an email when it is done. Then, you have power estimated values in your workout data.

It is important to note that the estimate is the average power per rower for the eight. You may have pulled harder or less hard than the average. However, the power estimate is a good way to get at least some power value for rowers without power, and it is a way to see if rowing with power is something for you, before you spend the money to buy a power meter.

Finally, I had set up today’s workout as a row over a course. On rowsandall.com, you can upload courses to row. Here is a link to the Brno 2k. You need to be logged in to see it. When you set up your session as a row over this course, and you link it to your workout data, the site checks whether your row went through the polygons marked on the course map and calculates your net time from start to finish:

When this is done by an entire training group, the rowsandall.com page gives you a ranking per time.

Saturday morning. Up at 7, to be in time for the departure to Hodonin. This second round of the Czech Ergometer Championships is in the nearby town of Hodonin, and as we were going with a large group of kids, we hired a coach (the type with wheels) to get us to Hodonin safely, and collectively. It takes a bit longer than driving there myself, but it is a relaxing way to travel, especially through the snow storm. (I also liked the idea of having a beer after my 2k.)

My race wasn’t on until 13:40 so I spent the morning watching the juniors racing.

One of the races where we had three Juniors (on ergs 5, 7 and 11):

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And some pictures:

Then it was time for me to do my warming up. With erg racing, you cannot use apps like ErgData or Painsled to get data from the PM. So I decided to just wear a heart rate belt and collect data on the phone that I would carry with my water bottle. On Strava, the result is a confused trajectory across the sports hall as shown on the little map.

I think that is actually an accurate depiction of the emotions one goes through when preparing for an erg race. There were about 40 ergs to warm up on, and every athlete goes through similar routines. Small groups of people left the warming up room for their races and small groups of people returned, limping, some being supported by their coaches, and dropped on one of the gym mats at one end of the warming up area, lying there for a few minutes before slowly moving to an erg to do their cooling down.

One of the people returning was one of Romana’s girls, who managed to win bronze in the Open Women’s competition. Now just to teach her some boat handling skills …

I returned to the main hall during the Masters Women race. Martin “Turkey” Krocil joined me. He is a Masters rower from our club, but also one of the coaches for the kids. He spent the entire day sitting behind ergs, “coxing” the athletes, and had volunteered to do the same for me. I quickly shared my plan with him. My plan was to row below 7 minutes (above would be a disappointment), and negative split, so I told him “1:45 is good, 1:46 is bad, accelerating towards the end”.

Then it was time to get to our ergs. I rowed on erg number 8. Erg 7 to my left was Karel Nevrala, a tall Masters rower from Olomouc, and to my right was the local guy, Kazimir (“Kazi”) Nedoba. Kazi and I are quite equal on the water, and our birthdays are only a month apart. We are good friends on land, and on water we fight like dogs. Unless we row together, like when we raced to our fantastic 3:16 time over 1k in the double, at Varese a few years ago.

On the erg, Kazi has always beaten me.

Stop rowing.

Waiting for all flywheels to stop spinning.

Attention – ROW!

After the start sequence I was looking at a 1:55 average pace and pulling 1:37. I was somewhere in the second half of the pack. On the bottom half of the erg screen you can see who is right ahead and behind you. I was behind Kazi, and Karel was leading the race. In front of the ergs was a large monitor where each competitor was marked by a little yellow boat, and I could see I was in a pack of rowers, and Karel was way in front.

It took some time to get the average pace down to 1:46 and below, because I didn’t want to go crazy to “correct” the average. In fact, I was struggling to find a rhythm. It didn’t help that a few strokes in, “something” traveled from my stomach to my mouth and I had to swallow it down again. “Not good,” I thought, while the erg screen showed me alternating between 1:46 and 1:45.

Martin did a great job of coaching me and he basically calmed me down to 1:45. The click came when he said to focus on pulling a strong finish. It made me sit up a bit higher and what was a 1:46 pull became a 1:45 pull. If I remember well, I ended the first 500m with a 1:45.0 average pace.

I also ended the first 500 thinking that it had taken ages to row those first 500m. I was still behind Kazi, in 5th overall position, but it was just a few meters. I resisted the temptation to speed up a bit and catch up with Kazi. Maybe I should have done it.

At 1400m to go Martin called for 1:44 strokes. “Try hold 1:44 now. You are moving”. He meant that my yellow boat was slowly moving relative to the pack of rowers around me.

I wanted to wait until 1200m to go but I just listened to Martin.

I passed Kazi, which was a big confidence booster, especially when you are in the “dead zone”, the dreaded middle part of a 2k, where the finish is still far, and the rowing starts to hurt.

I kept moving up the field, passing the next “boat” and rowing in third position. I checked the bottom half of the erg screen and saw that the second placed rower was just 5 meters ahead of me.

With 650m to go I started doing 1:43 pace. Next to me, Kazi had a HD moment. He handed down for half a second, then continued rowing. I almost shouted some encouragement to him, but didn’t do it. (After the race, over a beer, Kazi told me the HD demons had visited him three times during the race.)

Between 500m and 250m to go I rowed 1:42 – 1:43. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch up with the guy in front of me.

Martin was now screaming at me to sprint. I was counting strokes and pulling 1:40. Unfortunately, there was a guy behind me (the one I had passed around the half way point) who did a furious sprint. He finished in second place with a time of 6:52.

I pulled in at 6:55.9. My final stroke was 1:45 because I was breaking down after a long series of 1:40 pulls (even saw one 1:39 – I think – it was a bit blurry by then).

I hadn’t bothered to check my Personal Best before this race, thinking I would be happy to finish under 7 minutes. Turns out my 6:55.9 was just 0.5 seconds above breaking my PB. To be honest I didn’t monitor my average pace after the first 500m had passed, and as the race screen doesn’t show your predicted end time, I had no idea how far under 7 minutes I was pacing.

Online results as checked during the travel home

I handed down breathing heavily, and then I just sat on the erg, waiting for the older guys to finish their race. Kazi finished in 7:07 and I saw the disappointment on his face. Then I got up from the erg, thanked Martin for his excellent support, and walked over to the warming up/cooling down area, where I did a very slow 2k cooling down before returning to the hall to see the prize ceremony. No podium for me, unfortunately. Look at the results. Mr Vanecek was the guy I passed, who then sprinted past me in the final 500m.

Karel did one of his regular 6:30 performances.

After the shower, we all had a beer in the cafeteria. And then it was time to watch my sons race. In the 11-14 year categories, they do a “triathlon” consisting of an erg race, a running test, and a 1 minute “burpee” test where only “good” burpees are counted.

Robin’s 500m was fun to watch, but his technique needs to be improved. He stroked 45-46spm for the entire race:

Dominik pulled a 3:50 1k (2 seconds above his personal best). One of our guys won this race. He is to the left of Dominik in the video and he pulled a 3:23 time.

Finally, here is my updated CP chart, showing Friday’s 500m and Saturday’s 2k as the two workouts that are “above the line”:

Mind you, “a test 2k” is an entirely different thing than “a 2k Test”. But let me start at the beginning. In the morning, I drove to Modrice to pick up the mystery parcel from the UK. Luckily, the drive to Modrice is only ten minutes from the office. It turns out the mystery parcel was the latest issue of Row 360:

Lots of reading and beautiful photographs, yay!

In worse news, the low water level in our lake has revealed that somebody has dumped more than 200 car tires close to the bridge at Veverska Bytiska. I venture there occasionally, when I take a long steady state row through the gorge. What a crime!

So after the working day, it was time to test what it is to row a 2k. I am racing on the 14th, so I need some estimates. Today, I opted for the conservative approach, knowing that doing such a row after a working day is tough. Also, I have planned 4 minute and 1k trials in the coming week, during which I will get a good feel for the upper limit.

First, a long warming up:

Then on to the main event. The battle plan was to start at 280W and then accelerate and keep accelerating until I run out of steam. Which happened already at 290W.

Below a set of charts comparing this row with a 2k attempt of 11 months ago, where I set out at a sub 7 pace and then crashed. A few weeks later I rowed a solid 7:57.

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I was glad I opted for a conservative approach today. The pain of a 2k is something entirely different than that of a 5k or longer row. Even now, a few hours later, I feel a very distinct tiredness in all major muscles.

My first race was the Masters mix 2x with Romana. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we agreed that we would row it as a test race to Bled. Row our own race.

We launched early to get a few practice starts in and to get used to the chop and the crosswind. Then it was time for our start. The locals from Trebon to our right side looked dangerous, and we were also nervous for the trainer from Lodni Sporty, the other club in Brno, who rowed with her son who was over on vacation from Norway. He looks big. Also, I am convinced that the fastest mix Masters combinations are young guys with a “average age compensating” lady. That was it. Just three boats in the C category.

Aligning boats in a strong crosswind is not an easy task. We moved all the way to the stroke side buoys, hoping that the aligning would be fast enough to prevent us from moving over to the other side of the lane and having to row the first race strokes in the buoys. We managed that, but the last boat to be aligned was ours, so Romana was busy paddling, and the boat was not set, when the starter called “GO”.

We were second out of the start. Trebon was in front by a meter. Lodni Sporty were falling behind fast. Bye bye guy from Norway.

But with a 500m race, not leading out of the start, you’ve got a problem.

Tried to solve the problem by just keeping the stroke rate high. No settle, just furious 37/38spm strokes in the chop. “Row our own race” plan went out of the window.

I think we narrowed the gap to 30 cm, but we couldn’t quite close it. Then the gap opened again, as my legs started to hurt. I was definitely not rested after Saturday’s four races. So we were second. And we were disappointed. During the paddle home I had to explain why I needed to do four races on Saturday. The “Row our own race to prepare for Bled” argument was not deemed valid any more.

We all have our ways to deal with disappointment. It was OK.

I spent an hour in our team van to write up the blog post about Saturday’s races, and then I moved over to where my brother in law Tomas had his boat trailer. I explained to him that we would probably finish last in the Men’s Open 2x race, because I was really tired. We agreed to still row the race “to prepare for Bled” and do it in a leisurely 30spm.

So around 2pm we warmed up and rowed to the start.

Six boats. All young guys … and us in lane 3. The wind was very strong in the first 500m of the race course, because at this point the lake is not shielded by the spa park trees any more. The plan was to just row and survive the first 500, then find good rhythm and row the entire 2k at 30spm.

Attention – GO. Off we went. I did the full power start and first 15 strokes thing, but the five other boats were gone by the time we were finished with that. Ok, too bad, but we wanted to row our own race anyway.

The first 500m were a struggle, but not as bad as I expected, and we managed to find a good rhythm sooner than the 500m mark.

Somewhere around the 500m mark the boat on lane 1 was reappearing in my peripheral vision. I just kept going in 30/31 spm and at this slow stroke rates I felt pretty good.

We passed that boat, and to my surprise we were now in closing distance to the boat in lane 6. “Wow, all these guys go out like crazy and then settle to a really slow middle 1k,” I thought.

We passed the double in lane 6, and to let Tomas know that I was fine, I called “catch the next one”.

By now we had 1k to go. The regular Masters distance, and we were going gently enough to not be scared by that at all. And the first three boats were not so far ahead of us.

Unfortunately, these three boats started to row away from us. We just kept going. Lane 6 was passed by lane 1 as well, and started to fall behind.

Crossing the 500m line, the lane 1 boat did a visible shift in stroke rate. In fact, in that final 500m they managed to get back a lot of the distance Tomas and I had put between them and us. In the end it boiled down to a final sprint towards the finish line. I was really tired by then, but we managed and we finished just ahead of them.

Nice!

What a great race. It’s a pity that the 2k is not the Masters distance.

About 10 seconds after that, I became extremely disappointed, seeing the dreaded word “STOP” in the middle bar of my SpeedCoach. Oh no!

I had reset the SpeedCoach at the end of our warming up row, planning to switch it to “READY” by the time we would start aligning at the start. But of course, with the cross wind and all, I forgot. This was the second time that happened this weekend.

There was a glimpse of hope when I noticed that Tomas had switched on his SpeedCoach GPS. So after the race I took it to the computer and tried to download the data. This is when I found out that Tomas doesn’t have DataPack installed. So then I wanted to use the Recall function and take photos of the screen, but the memory was full with older data. Why can’t the bloody thing just remember the most recent 100 splits, instead of filling up the memory and then just not recording any more!

What a relief. I prolonged my membership of the sub-7 minutes group yesterday, at the “ErgoShow”.

The ErgoShow was an indoor rowing event. The main part of the event was the Czech Indoor Rowing Championships, but they had fun events around it. For Masters, there was a 1k race in the morning (to which I didn’t participate) and they had University Fours. Four ergs slides connected together, racing over 4 minutes. The sum of the four distance scores is the score of the four. Teams of different universities rowed against each other in this format.

They also had live broadcasting over YouTube and a very good commenter. In the morning, I followed the races from my living room. I ended up cheering to the computer monitor when my daughter Lenka rowed her race.

Just after lunch, one of the other Masters at our club, picked me up in his minivan. A quick round through Brno to pick up the others and we were on our way to Hodonin, a 1 hour drive south of Brno.

The venue was really nice. There was a warming up room with lots of ergs, a separate cooling down room with lots of ergs and bikes, and the main hall with two stages full of ergs. Another nice detail was lots of places where you could refill your water bottle with a sports drink for free.

I made a quick stop at the Concept2/NK booth to pick up some goodies:

Yes – my own Empower Oarlock. Too bad there is still 40cm of ice on our lake.

I also got an iphone connection kit. Unfortunately, I was already too focused on my race, and didn’t check it. At home, I found out that they had given me a connection kit for the iphone 4, which has a different connector than my iphone 5. Well, trainings at the club will remain unconnected for a while.

Concept2 did ask me if I could come around for a chat after the races.

Now it was less than an hour to my scheduled racing time. Time to change clothes and hop on one of the warming up ergs, a model D with a PM3.

After about 6km of Fletcher-like warming up (I can never remember the exact durations and paces, but I think I get it sort of right) it was time to visit the bathroom and some other confused running around. By the time I was done with that, it was 10 minutes to the scheduled time for my race.

A few minutes to get the footstretcher and drag factor set to my favorite settings and do a few strokes to test the erg, and then it was Ready – Attention – ROW! (Actually we did get to do that twice, because someone – not me – caused a false start.)

Again an unconnected row. I just have the Strava heart rate record from my Garmin watch:

On the monitor next to the erg I could see that my little boat was in the back of the pack. I knew this was going to happen and I actually rowed my own race. After the first few starting strokes I found myself at 1:39, with an average of 1:46. I continued conservatively, pulling 1:45/1:46 1:46 with the occasional 1:44 in the first 800m (I was mentally doing 1:46, but there were enough strokes at 1:45). At 1200m to go I switched to “1:45” (i.e. I banned 1:46 strokes). Rowed down to 900 to go, then to 600 to go, at which point I started pulling 1:44. With 300m to go I went all out. There was a guy who was 8m ahead of me. I nearly got him, but in the end he finished 2 seconds earlier.

No drama, really. Even though I wondered whether there was more in the tank, I was glad I paced conservatively. After my 7:09 debacle I wasn’t sure if I was in sub-7 shape. Actually when my competitors asked what I was aiming for, I jokingly answered that I would go for 6 minutes and 60 seconds.

The “quick chat” at the Concept2 booth started with “Why haven’t you told us about your project?” and it turned into a slightly longer, friendly chat. At one point my team mates threatened to leave without me, so I had to stop chatting and jump in the car back to Brno.

Here are the full results in the Masters category. Our Jiri Pfeifer rowed a nice row for a 51 year old (6:23.9). My race was won by Karel Nevrala. He moved to live with his Mix 2x partner, who now also is his girlfriend, and both of them have taken to train very hard. Romana and I beat them in the Mix 2x a couple of time, but she rowed a 6:57.6 yesterday, so she nearly chicked me.

My end time was 6:57.5 (just 1.9 seconds above my Masters PB of 6:55.6). Here are the splits according to the PM:

1st 500 – 1:45.4 – 31SPM

2nd 500 – 1:45.0 – 31 SPM

3rd 500 – 1:44.0 – 31 SPM

4th 500 – 1:43.2 – 33 SPM

Unfortunately, I cannot look at my race on YouTube any more because the Warner Music Group has blocked it for copyright reasons. Yes, there was background music played at the venue!

So the Masters rowers of our club want to go to the Masters Worlds in Bled this year, and I am one of the guys who has been urging everyone to train hard this winter. I even put up a list on the notice board where people are supposed to write their 6k and 2k erg scores (fall, spring and summer values).

Today, there is an erg race in Pardubice, where I was supposed to compete. However, our boys have been sick. They are recovered now, but we decided that it is better I stay at home with them, a day before we go to the mountains.

The instructions of our coach were clear: “Masters compete in Pardubice. Who cannot make it, rows a 2k on Saturday and sends me the score.”

So at the end of the morning I headed down to the basement and started doing the Fletcher warming up for 1:44 pace. I thought I was in shape for a PB attempt. Actually, I had difficulty not going faster than the paces prescribed by Fletcher, at his prescribed rates. Here is the warming up:

The story is simple. I set off at 1:44 pace. In the second 500m I retreated to 1:45 pace, seeing the occasional stroke at 1:46. At 1000m to go I did a power 10, hoping that would give me motivation to get through the dreaded third 500m. After the “power 10” I had difficulty finding the 1:45 pace again. Actually, pace slipped to 1:48 and I wasn’t able to react.

With 500m to go I told myself that all is not lost and with a strong final 500m I could at least set a decent time.

No way.

I sped up slightly, but that only brought me back to a terrible 1:48 pace. Then I let the pace slip back to 1:50 and worse …

Here are the metrics charts:

After the row, I sent the score to the coach.

I guess I will not be going to Bled, unless I drastically improve something.

The problem is that I am not sure what I am doing wrong. I need to look at my training load of November and December, and compare it to the 2015/16 season. I need to find what I am doing wrong. There must be something.